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Customizing Your Own TV

Your TV makes you watch an ad before it will let you open Netflix. On Oct 17, 2026, Gathin (@gathint) handed Claude Code his parents' Xiaomi TV model number — it found the TV over Wi-Fi, switched off 25 Xiaomi packages (ads, tracking, bloat) and wrote a new home screen that looks like an Apple TV. He turned the whole thing into a free repo.

Free & open source where noted · every link checked

This is the companion page to my video — everything I mentioned, in order, with the real links so you can do it tonight. TechCrunch covered the story too (Sarah Perez, Oct 19).

Before and after TV home screens cleaned with CleanYourTV

Real before/after shots from the repo — source: github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

Two things to get straight before you start — Star counts move fast, so trust the badge on the repo for today's number rather than any figure in a video (it was 34.7k stars and 307 tested models across 87 brands as of Oct 25). And this is not a hack, not root, and nothing is flashed — it uses Android's built-in debugging door and disables packages, which is why restore works. It also doesn't find your TV by itself: you have to turn on developer options and tap Allow.

1Step 1 — Check your TV's OS
Tells you in ten seconds whether any of this will work on your set.
For you if You're not sure if your TV is Android TV, Google TV, Fire OS, Tizen, webOS or Roku.
Get it on GitHub →
2CleanYourTV (the repo)
The free, open-source prompt and scripts that disable bloat and install a clean launcher.
For you if You want the exact thing from the video, not a copycat.
34.7kGitHub stars as of Oct 25 — check the badge for today's count
Get it on GitHub →
3Claude Code
Reads the repo, connects to your TV over ADB on Wi-Fi, and runs the batches for you.
For you if You'd rather paste one prompt than learn adb commands.
Get it →
4PROMPT.md
The single paste-in prompt — you just fill in your exact TV model.
For you if You want the step everyone's screenshotting.
Get it on GitHub →

The repo's own Samsung write-up is here if you want to read it before giving up on a Tizen set: samsung-tizen.md.

The safety wrapper I'd paste with it:

My TV: [exact model, e.g. Xiaomi TV A2 43] running [Android TV / Google TV].
Follow PROMPT.md in this repo.

Rules:
- Disable packages only (pm disable-user). Never uninstall, never root, never flash firmware.
- Back up the full package list first and save the restore script where I can find it.
- Work in batches of 5. Show me the batch and don't touch anything until I say yes.
- After each batch, pause so I can test the remote, HDMI input and Netflix.
- Skip anything boot-critical.

If something breaks:

Run the saved restore script and re-enable every package you disabled on my TV. Then confirm the original launcher is back and the remote still works.
One prompt, fifteen minutes, and a thing that annoyed you every single night is just gone — that's the whole pattern, and it's not only true for TVs.
That's the whole idea behind what we call 90TEN™: actually use AI to get your time back, keep doing what you love about your business, and automate the rest. Hundreds of AI Surfers are learning it together — come learn it with us at theaisurfer.com.

Start with Settings → About. If it says Android TV or Google TV, clone the official repo, run it in small batches, and keep the restore script. When you're done, turn USB and network debugging back OFF — leaving it on is a security hole. And if you disable something the TV needs to boot, ADB dies with it and your only way back is a factory reset, so go slow.